On the Monotone Upper Bound Problem

dc.creatorPfeifle, Julian
dc.creatorZiegler, Günter M.
dc.date2003-08-20
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T05:00:30Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T05:00:30Z
dc.descriptionThe Monotone Upper Bound Problem asks for the maximal number M(d,n) of vertices on a strictly-increasing edge-path on a simple d-polytope with n facets. More specifically, it asks whether the upper bound M(d,n)<=M_{ubt}(d,n) provided by McMullen's (1970) Upper Bound Theorem is tight, where M_{ubt}(d,n) is the number of vertices of a dual-to-cyclic d-polytope with n facets. It was recently shown that the upper bound M(d,n)<=M_{ubt}(d,n) holds with equality for small dimensions (d<=4: Pfeifle, 2003) and for small corank (n<=d+2: Gärtner et al., 2001). Here we prove that it is not tight in general: In dimension d=6 a polytope with n=9 facets can have M_{ubt}(6,9)=30 vertices, but not more than 26 <= M(6,9) <= 29 vertices can lie on a strictly-increasing edge-path. The proof involves classification results about neighborly polytopes, Kalai's (1988) concept of abstract objective functions, the Holt-Klee conditions (1998), explicit enumeration, Welzl's (2001) extended Gale diagrams, randomized generation of instances, as well as non-realizability proofs via a version of the Farkas lemma.
dc.description15 pages; 6 figures
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/math/0308186
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/math/0308186
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/68348
dc.subjectMetric Geometry
dc.subjectCombinatorics
dc.subject52B05 (Primary) 52-04(Secondary)
dc.titleOn the Monotone Upper Bound Problem
dc.typetext

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